Gary and Lynda Hays renewed their vows and celebrated their 50th anniversary with close friends and family at an afternoon gathering hosted by their children and grandchildren at Woodmoor Gables Lodge on the Smith River in Hiouchi.

Editor’s note: This is the inaugural installment of a new monthly column, “The Accidental Family,” written by the Triplicate’s former “Localvore” columnist.

I’ll start with a confession: I’m the accidental mother of four. My husband and I started our family with two little boys, Henry, 7, and Theo, 4, but our two girls, Emily and Lydia, 16, officially became part of our family this past December. Adopting them was a very intentional act — on our part as well as theirs — but they came into our lives in an unexpected way.

This first contribution to The Accidental Parent will be about the brave new world that all six of us now inhabit — a world we are just starting to explore.

The rain’s back — and welcome — because it washes everything down when it comes.

There always seems to be a skittering of paper cups and the like drifting in the streets, but a bit of breeze and a good rain seems to take care of it. If only people would hang onto their empty containers until they get home and put them in the trash!

It washes the dead stuff out of the redwoods, and revitalizes the grass and other growing things.

Presentations on community gardens, cooking

A summit hosted by the Del Norte County Public Health Branch, First 5 Del Norte and the Center for Healthy Communities at CSU Chico will recognize three local residents who are committed to making healthy lifestyle changes in their community at a summit on Thursday.

Leslie Murphy’s third-grade class at Mary Peacock Elementary School show off the dictionaries they received from Crescent City’s Sunrise Rotary Club on Friday. As part of the Dictionary Project, the Sunrise Rotary Club gives a dictionary to Del Norte’s third-graders.